As we near this year’s Spring Festival I thought I’d talk a little bit about it. And that is the first thing to say, I think. In China it isn’t called Chinese New Year. It’s called Spring Festival.

Let me ramble for a bit, first. I’ve noticed that in China, when they celebrate Christmas, they don’t really understand who Santa Clause is, but they know he’s important. They don’t really get why the tree is important, but they know it is, too. So you see Christmas Tree and Santa Clause decorations, but talking to people about them shows the confusion around their meanings, confusion as to why they are important to our Christmas celebrations.

But those conversations also made me understand a bit about why they are important. Childhood memories. Tradition. Our childhood memories of Christmas include them, so we have them present to give our children their childhood memories. We don’t really believe in Santa, and most people have no idea how the tree came to be part of the celebrations. They just are.

Traditions in China seem to be spelled out better, but the end result is the same – the reasons things are done a certain way mostly has to do with traditions and shared memories.

My children are American, but they were born in China. At some point in their lives they will have to define who they are. Some grown (and growing) international adoptees see themselves as more Chinese (or Korean, or Russian, or whatever), and some identify more as American. And some spend a few years identifying mostly one way and then a few years identifying mostly the other way, before finding a nice happy space where they can comfortably be both. I need to give my girls the foundations so that if they choose to identify more as Chinese some day, that they won’t be lost while trying to do so. If one of them meets a nice Chinese boy with parents who moved to America when he was a young child and who still celebrate traditional holidays, then I want her to have an idea of what those holidays are about when she goes to his home to celebrate with his family. I want her to feel as if she fits in, not as if she has no idea what is going on. When she’s in college if she joins some sort of Chinese club, I want her to feel comfortable going to holiday celebrations within the club. I want her to have her own childhood memories of these holidays.

Okay, so those are some of my reasons for celebrating holidays. I’ll talk more on another post about how we celebrate Spring Festival. For now I’ll point out some books about the subject.

First though, I’ll point to something I haven’t seen yet: A new Kai-Lan video out about Chinese New Year. I’ve been impressed enough with this series that I’ll buy this one without reading any reviews of it.

As for books, there is Moonbeams, Dumplings & Dragon Boats, which tells about several holidays, not just Spring Festival. I like having children’s books and other media to help show them these things. During Christmas our kids see Santa and trees and ornaments and TV shows for several months from every direction. I want outside reinforcement for the Chinese holidays as well, and since it isn’t available on the streets and in the stores and on every other commercial that plays on TV, I try to provide those images in other ways.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 4:27 pm and is filed under Book, CD, & DVD Reviews, Chinese Culture, Misc Discussions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.